Written by | Ho Furong
Edit | Wu Xianzhi
"To say that the difference between Douyin and Kuaishou doing e-commerce, the most direct is that Douyin e-commerce is to directly convert traffic, and Kuaishou first turns traffic into its own fans, and then mainly through fan conversion." That is, the difference between a public domain and a private domain. A Kuaishou service provider said.
On the road of exploring e-commerce on the short video content platform, the initial logic of Douyin and Kuaishou is not much different, that is, it is to accumulate fans through content creation, and then rely on fans for commercial conversion.
However, after two or three years of exploration, the differentiation of Douyin and Kuaishou based on the platform ecology has opened up a significant gap.
Douyin has made a certain degree of rounding between content and e-commerce, and the role of content in promoting e-commerce conversion has a weakening trend, while improving search to move closer to shelf-type e-commerce. In addition, the introduction of star anchors, branding to break the circle, and the launch of trendy e-commerce apps, etc., were even once labeled as "Tmall".
Kuaishou's unique old iron culture and the sinking market fit, the two tones are unified, all business has to be carried out in this way, which is an advantage for Kuaishou e-commerce is also a shackle.
Kuaishou once increased its efforts to go family, "big brand, big service, big trust e-commerce" to try to break the sinking, low and other labels, but it seems that it is not easy for Kuaishou to break the circle, and the problems that Pinduoduo failed to solve are just as tricky for Kuaishou.
The upper and lower limits of the content ecology
Under normal circumstances, there is a natural contradiction between the content community and commercialization, and Douyin and Xiaohongshu have more or less damaged the content atmosphere of the platform when extending to e-commerce. Douyin is now also bypassing content and directly doing e-commerce.
Kuaishou e-commerce is an exception, "content" has always played the most basic and important role, the development of Kuaishou e-commerce and content complement each other, which mainly stems from Kuaishou's private domain attributes.
"To do Kuaishou e-commerce, you must do your own content, and you can do e-commerce by accumulating fans." The repurchase rate of Kuaishou fans can reach an average of 60%-70%, and many of them do well to more than 80%. The above-mentioned Kuaishou service provider said.
Content is always the premise for Kuaishou masters or merchants to accumulate private domain traffic, and private domain traffic is the biggest driving force for e-commerce conversion.
Short video and live broadcast are still the two main traffic entrances of Kuaishou e-commerce. "Selling things in Kuaishou, getting traffic through short videos is the most basic. Each of our short videos will generally hang a small yellow car, if your short video explodes, the corresponding product sales will rise accordingly, if you open the live broadcast synchronously, the introduction of people into the live broadcast room will be converted again. A clothing merchant said.
"We do clothing, and short videos show drainage is more important. Sometimes a short video explodes, then the sales of this day are basically more than 200,000; If the short video does not explode, the regular sales will be about 150,000. ”
At the same time, the above-mentioned people said that even if it is kuaishou's official marketing platform Magnetic Taurus, not all products are suitable for investment, such as clothing, beauty and other goods, it is difficult to sell without shooting short videos and burning Taurus.
"Do not shoot short videos ROI is particularly low, the general Kuaishou clothing ROI is above 80-90%, if you do not shoot short videos, generally run a 20-30%, so it does not make money."
While Kuaishou increases the volume of transactions and diverts the live broadcast room with short video content, its more important role is to precipitate fans through content output and accumulate private domain traffic for stable and continuous conversion.
The same is the short video platform of Douyin, now the recommendation of short video hanging small yellow car has become less and less, more and more is the most direct transaction conversion through the live broadcast room. At the same time, in the Douyin mall, merchants can also directly open stores beyond the content, and the relevance of Douyin e-commerce and platform content has become smaller and smaller.
Kuaishou can maximize the integration of content and e-commerce, which is inseparable from Kuaishou's "people"-centered platform atmosphere. Douyin realizes the search for goods through interest recommendation, and consumers recognize goods but do not recognize people; Kuaishou is more of a person looking for goods, and uses the talent as a transfer point, and many consumers shop for the person or merchant they trust.
Therefore, the account settings of talents and merchants in Kuaishou have become particularly important, and users can establish emotional links through content here, so as to maximize conversion.
These so-called emotional links and private domain attributes seem to be directly or indirectly determining the upper and lower limits of the Kuaishou e-commerce branding circle.
Quick to regain the "white card"
In the past year, brand upgrading was once one of the most important actions of Kuaishou e-commerce, in order to break the negative labels such as sinking and inferior products on the platform, and at the same time seize the high-price market through brand upgrading.
In July last year, Kuaishou E-commerce put forward the "three big engagements" (big trust e-commerce, big brand, big service providers), which is a phased strategic goal of the incremental business of e-commerce. Kuaishou put forward the development concept of trusting e-commerce, encouraged the service provider system to provide service support for the development of e-commerce, and the brand will become the main direction of Kuaishou e-commerce in the future.
Therefore, for a period of time, Kuaishou has been busy introducing brands and spending money and traffic to support the growth of brand merchants in Kuaishou.
At the end of October last year, Cheng Yixiao succeeded Su Hua in charge of Kuaishou, and with the change of CEO, Kuaishou's branding strategy was adjusted accordingly.
On April 25, Kuaishou E-commerce released the "Fast Brand Support Plan", and then at the 2022 Kuaishou E-commerce Gravity Conference, the previous "three big engagements" were upgraded to "four big deals" (big trust e-commerce, big fast brands, big brands, big service providers), and officially put "fast brands" to priority.
"Fast brand" has become the core keyword of Kuaishou in 2022, and Kuaishou will also take out more than 23 billion traffic to support more than 500 fast brands this year.
Xiaogu, head of Kuaishou's e-commerce business, defines "fast brand" as a group of new force merchants that attach importance to fan services that have grown up in the Kuaishou e-commerce ecosystem, who are based on their own brands and uphold the business philosophy of "real people, real goods, and real prices", and provide fans with products and services with high experience and price ratio in the live broadcast room.
The simple understanding is that it is a "white card" business that has grown up in the Kuaishou ecology.
At the same time, Kuaishou also disclosed the business results related to "fast brand" for the first time in this year's quarterly report. According to the financial report, in the first quarter of this year, the average monthly e-commerce transaction volume of the fast brand exceeded 25 million yuan, the average unit price of customers was about twice that of the market data, and the monthly repurchase rate of users was as high as 80%.
Kuaishou brand upgrade is no longer only committed to the introduction of mature brands, and the priority of "fast brands" also reveals the conservative and cautious entry of mature well-known brands into Kuaishou.
Kuaishou's branding introduction in the past year has achieved certain results, such as Xiaomi, OPPO, Haier, Perfect Diary, Han Xizhen, Polaria, China Jewelry, Yalu, Heilan Home and many other mature brands have successively settled in Kuaishou, of which mainly concentrated on some domestic brands.
Based on the brand tone and audience considerations, Kuaishou's unique old iron culture and sinking attributes have natural obstacles to brand upgrading. In this regard, Kuaishou and Pinduoduo share the same disease.
However, what is more difficult to break through than the price seems to be the user's mind. Kuaishou's dependence on private domain traffic determines that the brand must put down its body to establish an emotional connection with the user, which is difficult for most mature and well-known brands to do than the parents of many fast brand anchors. Even if it is a mature brand, many Kuaishou users are not cold.
Taking Xiaomi, OPPO and other head mobile phone brands as an example, it has been stationed in Kuaishou for more than half a year, and now the number of fans has remained at more than 3 million, which is not much of an advantage compared with the number of fans of the head fast brand of tens of millions.
"Mature brands rely more on public domain traffic, while fast brands that have grown up in Kuaishou mainly rely on private domain traffic." The above-mentioned Kuaishou service provider said. It can be seen that there is a certain misalignment between the platform ecology of Kuaishou's heavy private domain and the operation of mature brands.
Kuaishou e-commerce started from "white-label" goods, and now white-brand products are also the largest supply chain source of the platform, compared to brand introduction, internal cultivation of fast brands seems to be more in line with Kuaishou's e-commerce ecology.
Rather than introducing brands and trying to prove to the outside world that its brand has risen, Kuaishou has now chosen a compromise plan that is more suitable for itself, that is, to support homegrown white-label products and upgrade the brand from within.
Fast brand downgrade or upgrade?
The growth of "fast brand" depends largely on the long-term accumulation of merchants or talents on the Kuaishou platform, and after gaining the trust of platform users, it has gained a stable and continuous source of customers.
These so-called fast brands are mainly white-label products, including many OEM and generation products. The above-mentioned Kuaishou service providers said that since the de-heading of Kuaishou, the platform is vigorously supporting the middle waist account, and each personal account has the opportunity to grow into a fast brand in the later stage.
The birth of the fast brand, the personal brand effect of the anchor or the merchant plays a great role, and this excessive dependence on "people" often makes the "goods" take advantage of the loophole, which is why in the past, Fast Hand was once marked with negative labels such as inferior quality.
Now that Kuaishou has straightened out its white-label products and given the name of "brand", it seems difficult to define whether to upgrade or downgrade.
Kuaishou has long been based on the sinking market, and the old iron culture is deeply rooted, and the trust of fans in merchants or talents has directly contributed to the growth of Kuaishou white-label products. "Sell goods to sell goods, don't tell the old iron about those grand brand narratives on Kuaishou." One Kuaishou user said so.
This also shows that the Sinking Market of Kuaishou is in line with the culture of the old iron, so it is decided that Kuaishou has its own differentiated advantages in the ranks of e-commerce competition, and it is enough to bring reliable and tangible goods to the old iron to grow up in Kuaishou.
"Fast Brand" can be regarded as Kuaishou's brand layout based on its own unique ecology.